Poonch cloudburst: Man steps out to move SUV, returns to find 8 family members buried under rubble

Jammu, Jul 19: What began as a precautionary move in the dead of the night turned into a lifetime of grief for Mohammad Latief. At around 3:30 am, the elderly resident of Lower Muran, a remote village in the Surankote tehsil of Poonch district in Jammu and Kashmir, stepped out to shift his SUV to safer ground as torrential rain lashed the area. Minutes later, a cloudburst unleashed a torrent of mud, rocks and floodwater that brought down his three-storey house on the bank of a stream, burying eight members of his family beneath the rubble. Latief survived by sheer chance. His elder son, too, escaped the tragedy because he was away in Jammu when the tragedy struck. For the rest of the family, there was no escape. As dawn broke, the devastation became painfully clear, with a mound of broken concrete, twisted iron and debris filling what the family once called home. By first light, the stream had returned to its usual calm, masking the fury with which it swallowed the three-storey house just hours earlier. Refusing to be overwhelmed by his personal loss, Latief joined villagers and rescue workers desperately searching for those trapped beneath the collapsed structure. Armed with shovels and ropes, they worked relentlessly through the day, hoping to find survivors. The search, however, yielded only heartbreak. By the evening, the rescuers managed to retrieve two bodies – Bano Bi (60) and two-year-old Sofian Yasar – from the debris, while efforts continued to locate the remaining family members, including Latief’s wife Noor Safia, sons Sajad Ahmad, Haqnawaz, Shahnawaz and Mohd Akram, and daughter-in-law Khalida Kouser. Mohammad Aslam, a relative, said Latief had stepped out of his house before dawn to move his Bolero to a safer location within the village, as heavy rain lashed the area. Latief went to a relative’s house nearby. His wife advised him to return home only after daybreak to avoid getting caught in the rain, Aslam said, as the village performed the last rites of the two dead. The villagers said the cloudburst struck with terrifying force, giving the residents little time to react. The sudden deluge triggered flash floods and landslides, flattening a few houses and washing away roads, leaving several villages cut off from the rest of the district. Latief’s story emerged as one of the most poignant accounts of the cloudburst that ravaged Surankote – a reminder of how, in the face of nature’s fury, survival can sometimes depend on a matter of minutes. In nearby Sangla village, Abdul Hameed, his wife, daughter and sister were swept away by the strong current. A day-long search by rescue teams led to the recovery of the body of one of the women downstream. There was no trace of the Hameed’s house, which was swept away, while the search for the remaining missing family members continued.